Z wrote:
[ worry about woodworm ]
I fear I have taken them home so I will need to treat my house as well
:-(

I found castings, tiny sand coloured insects and dead beetles under
the fridge this morning when I pulled the refrigerator out to clean
and defrost it. These are the same species I have found at the
properties I maintain.

I will need to treat my own house myself.

I don't think you are correct. You seem to have made some baseless
assumptions. Now is not the time for woodworm to emerge. You won't
cart larvae about on your cloths, unless you've been smashing up or
splitting timber. They couldn't survive long enough outside to eat
their way into timber again anyway. Adult beetles would fly off
you PDQ anyway. You are most unlikely to spread woodworm by the
means you mention.


Any recommendations for chemicals? I can get out the house for a
week in May.

Anything you can get from a BM or DIY retailer, if you decide to
treat timberwork. Use protective equipment, i.e. mask/coverall.

However, given the unlikelyness of all that crap under your fridge
being woodworm, I wouldn't bother.

Hints:

Woodworm live in wood. They hatch from an egg laid on the timber,
and burrow into it. You can't see those holes. They live in the
wood as larvae (maggots) until mature, when they "drill" through
to the surface of the wood, leaving exit ("flight") holes. The
beetles may be found, later in the year, on window cills etc.
trying to get out. Their flight holes are worth looking at - if
they are old, then shining a torch across (in the dark!) will
not show them up well - the inside of the hole will have gone
the same colour as the outside, the holes will have filled with
dust or whatever. If the holes are fresh (look in late Summer
or Autumn) they will stand out very well, the insides of the
holes will be a light "new wood" colour. There may be frass
("timber dust", ahem) lying about from new boreholes, too. It
isn't worth doing anything about the situation in a hurry -
treatments soak into the outside of the timber, and only poison
the beetle as it chews its way out. Larvae in the wood are not
killed. You need quite a serious amount of woodworm tunnels to
make replacement necessary.

Now you know quite a lot about practical woodworm treatment,
so look up some pictures on the 'net to see what they look like.


J.B.